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But when he is out of himself, reason quenched by sickness or
by magic arts?
If it be allowed that in this state, resting as it were in a
slumber, he remains a Sage, why should he not equally remain
happy? No one rules him out of felicity in the hours of sleep; no
one counts up that time and so denies that he has been happy all
his life.
If they say that, failing consciousness, he is no longer the
Sage, then they are no longer reasoning about the Sage: but we do
suppose a Sage, and are enquiring whether, as long as he is the
Sage, he is in the state of felicity.
"Well, a Sage let him remain," they say, "still, having no
sensation and not expressing his virtue in act, how can he be
happy?"
But a man unconscious of his health may be, none the less,
healthy: a man may not be aware of his personal attraction, but
he remains handsome none the less: if he has no sense of his
wisdom, shall he be any the less wise?
It may perhaps be urged that sensation and consciousness are
essential to wisdom and that happiness is only wisdom brought to
act.
Now, this argument might have weight if prudence, wisdom, were
something fetched in from outside: but this is not so: wisdom is,
in its essential nature, an Authentic-Existence, or rather is The
Authentic-Existent- and this Existent does not perish in one
asleep or, to take the particular case presented to us, in the
man out of his mind: the Act of this Existent is continuous
within him; and is a sleepless activity: the Sage, therefore,
even unconscious, is still the Sage in Act.
This activity is screened not from the man entire but merely from
one part of him: we have here a parallel to what happens in the
activity of the physical or vegetative life in us which is not
made known by the sensitive faculty to the rest of the man: if
our physical life really constituted the "We," its Act would be
our Act: but, in the fact, this physical life is not the "We";
the "We" is the activity of the Intellectual-Principle so that
when the Intellective is in Act we are in Act.
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